Latest News on ILM:08, Santa Clara (Nov.19-21)

We’re just about ready to go with Interactive Local Media: 08, which is Nov.19-21 in Santa Clara, in the heart of Silicon Valley. It should be a very important, game-defining event – and the first one for The Kelsey Group in the new BIA Advisory Services era (they acquired Kelsey last week, adding resources and smarts to the team).

Here are some new highlights. Our opening keynoter is local search innovator Mark Canon, the ex Switchboard/AOL Search/Autobytel exec who now runs Yell.com. Mark will share his authoritative insights on local, vertical and directory/search, and the differences between the U.S. and international markets.

We have also developed a great “pre-conference” session with Andrew Shotland, the former NBC and InsiderPages exec who has become “Mr. Local SEO Guide.” Andrew is providing his insider tips on Search Engine Marketing.

From Yahoo’s newspaper consortium, we’re adding former Tribune Interactive exec Mike Silver, who represents the newspapers in all this. He joins Yahoo’s Lem Lloyd on the podium to talk about what we’ve learned so far.

On the SMB SuperForum, we’ve added Jeff Stibel from Web.com, who will be keynoting the mega-session. We’ve also added John Keister from Marchex; Travis Fore from Network Solutions Inc; and Matt Howard from SMBLive (an especially interesting broadband service).

On the Video Superforum, we’ve landed Brian McCarthy from Citysearch, Peter Bowen from SeeSaw Networks, Glenn Pingul from Mixpo, Diaz Nesamoney from Jivox and Steve Espinosa from eLocal Listing. We’re also adding an out of home twist –out of home is a huge growth area in local advertising – via John McMenamin of Ripple TV.

We’re also pleased to have lured Pieter Grasdijk from The Netherlands to talk about ilocal; and Josh Herman from Acxiom’s Info Base to talk about local audience segmentation.

Wrapping things up with “all thoughts local” are three of our smartest friends: Ethan Stock from Zvents, Jennifer Dulski from Center’d and Craig Hagopian from V-Enable.

Throughout the whole thing, we’re running state-of-the-art, and really fun iPhone and video demos, and even running some contests, with the audience voting via laser pen (yours to keep). See you in Santa Clara? Here’s the link to register.

2 thoughts on “Latest News on ILM:08, Santa Clara (Nov.19-21)”

WOW. I would love to go to this. Not only does the meet up sound amazing, I would love to meet Andrew Shotland. He is amazing at SEO. I just started http://seodan.wordpress.com recently and his advice is good, but his work is EXCELLENT. Long story short, if my blog gets to the level of his I have won at life.

I am not familiar with everyone that is attending, but if they are all of this status it would be well worth attending. I am sure that if i’m not being lazy I could find it.. but does the conference have a twitter account? or who should I follow for updates.